Expanding our Horizons in a Digital Age

One of my courses this semester is all about using the web and IT in order to better teach to a new age of student. It is fascinating stuff and really challenging me to re-consider everything I do in and out of the classroom in terms of connecting to the kids in a way that is all about “learning to learn” instead of being “programmed to learn”. This is the stuff that I really want and need in order to move my own pedagogical practices forward and yet, the more I get into it, the more I realize that in terms of real computer savvy, I have already been left far, far behind.

One of the articles I am reading talks about the new “informational economy” as being “divided between people who are valuable to the network and people who are not” and where “innovation and flexibility are seen as key to productiveness and competitiveness – valuable people are, as the author argues, “Self-programmable labour…who have learnt how to learn, and are able to continue learning and adapting throughout their careers”. There is much here that I have already seen and appreciate in terms of which way the world is heading, both for my own career as well as the lives of my students, and I ignore this trend at the peril of soon being unable to speak the same language as the people with whom I share the classroom.

Another article described life in the 21st century as it relates to IT this way: some of us exist as natives in the world of computers and the internet while the rest are immigrants. The natives, like Colin and Alex, are born into the world and know nothing else. The use of computers is like breathing, natural and with no thought to the other options – like, not breathing. For the immigrants, we know another world - the world before computers, where we relied upon different approaches and techniques to learning, sharing information, etc. And while we may know, embrace and function effectively in the world of computers, we will never be able to see or breathe as “naturally” as the native. Seen from the perspective of learning a second language versus being raised as a native speaker, the analogy seems to fit very well.

And so, as an immigrant to the land of IT, though now wanting to know more all the time, I am faced with the daunting challenge of trying to re-program much in the way that I teach and have held so previously in high regard in terms of effective practice. It is very tough slogging because it forces one to reject much of the bedrock stuff that defined your personal and professional philosophies in favour of something that you haven’t seen or experienced in action. To continue with my own analogy, I am trying to learn how to breathe another way.

Personally, with respect to our approach to parenting – for some a topic more taboo than sex or income – we have struggled with respect to “electronics” in trying to find a balance with the boys that acknowledges and respects their rights and interests while at the same time limiting what they see or play and how long they do it. It is a constant battle for control with the computer itself never offering any advice of its own. A mere innocent in the whole transactional debate, the laptop and internet simply wait and wait, knowing one of us or maybe all of us will crack - scurrying for control of the mouse and uttering some pathetic defence like “I just want to check my email!” or “I just need to win this level!” We’re all addicted to a certain degree.

Then there is all of the current “literature” around the issue of whether or not the use of the internet and computers is harming our ability to read, write and for all intents and purposes, think. In Australia anyway, you can’t go a couple of days without reading some “expert’s” op-ed hand wringing about how the youth of today are being “dumbed down” by their obsessive and unrestricted use of the world wide web. I do not necessarily disagree. Yet, there are many others who argue that we are reading more than any generation prior thanks to the web and the ability to be exposed to more ideas and writing and to view it all with a more critical eye has only been enhanced by our time online.

All of which forces me to reflect further on the value of traveling abroad with children. Lint and I often try to imagine what all of this travel will leave etched in the minds of our kids. Anything? The right things? Will there be things that they have learned through this experience that they might not have gained simply by “logging on” back home in TO? It’s hard to say. What do any of us remember about being six or nine? And, given the trend, is this experiential attitude the right one to try to foster when all around us the world seems to be satisfying itself by staying at home and dialing up their own reality online. Actually, I know the answer – at least, the right one for us. But just like the theory around the natives and the immigrants, is our need to see the world more a legacy of an “immigrant” generation? Are the natives really restless? Or is this digital age simply a safer way to know less about more without ever leaving the warm, comforting glow of your monitor? At the very least, I hope our guys are being shown at least one more way, though perhaps old-fashioned, of learning to learn.